There was no escape from the strain: in the course of two weeks, excitement morphed into dread. Not knowing reduced me to a state of trepidation fuelled by rumours of the type that sound plausible only during an emergency. According to one which floated my way in office talk, the British SAS, convinced the Iraqis were about to launch an invasion of Bahrain from their Kuwaiti beachhead, planned to land paratroops at the southern end of the island (not far from the
News
office) under cover of darkness and evacuate us all in a meticulously timed operation.
Unlikely though it may sound, such rumours made perfect sense at that time. Why wouldn't the British look after their own? And, as Australia didn't have an embassy there, why wouldn't Britain include Australian nationals in the plan? I remember, when trying to fathom why no one had explicitly asked me to join such an action, oscillating in my mind between the explanation that, for it to succeed, secrecy was of the essence, so âthey' must be waiting for the right time to confide in me; and thinking that, as the paper had been willing to terminate my services, the silence from its ranks meant there was room for only a certain number on board the evacuation ships and I was not among those chosen.
Madness is cancer of the mind. It creeps, not cutting you off abruptly from an awareness of how absurd are the propositions it presents you with, but never giving you the peace of a settled thought, never yielding a settled conclusion. I know now that when you're going mad you do more thinking to less effect than at other times. Like a car in overdrive, the mind's gears rev to amazing speeds but the momentum cannot be summoned up to propel you forward.
So one day towards mid-August I found my steps leading me to the British Embassy compound, whereâmindful of how ludicrous it must soundâ I asked to speak to one of the overworked staff there who were indeed checking the names and addresses of British citizens resident in Bahrain. They noted down my name and contact details as well.
One night, perhaps that same day, I repaired to the Londoner pub, the one place where Westerners, in my few months' experience of the island, had gone to relax, to get away from their workaday cares. Propping up the bar, as he often did, was Les, the jaunty English news editor with whom I got on well, while the walls of mutual confidence between me and others were crumbling.
To look at him, you wouldn't know Bahrain was in the eye of a crisis. He seemed understanding, willing to explain what he knewâwhich wasn't much more than anyone elseâand I see now that my gabbling rapid-fire speech must have been a sign to him then of the tensions that had me in their grip.
We drank, and talked exhaustively of the local, regional and global implications, as journos do, but at no point did Les tip me the wink as to what part of the island the boats would be waiting at, or when the SAS would be spiriting us to safety. Of course I couldn't ask straight out, because that would risk jeopardising the mission's success. When a âphoney war' is on, all you've ever read about âLoose lips sink ships' and how people are exhorted to react under pressure
becomes
your attitude; you play the role you think is expected of you. Already I was in the grip of a delusion, but no one else could see itâand that is the saddest thing of all about mental illness.
So I can be sure it wasn't from Les, but from a comment overheard by a stranger at the bar, that I became convinced that on the following weekendâon Sunday night 19 Augustâall the Westerners in Bahrain were meant to gather at the airport at a prearranged time (just when wasn't stated) for an orderly evacuation from the island state. It seemed to my logic-chopping mind that selecting the airport as the rendezvous must have been a ploy to divert attention from the fact that our evacuation was to be seaborne, and that transport would be arranged from there to wherever the ships would be waiting. Sunday it would be, then, and mum's the word.
We know now that the active phase of Desert Storm, the operation that drove the Iraqis from Kuwait, would create hundreds of cases of what was to become known as Gulf War syndrome. While never claiming to have been in a theatre of armed conflict as directly as those people were, but nevertheless as an early victim of the Kuwait invasion, I have an instinctive feeling for the casualties of that war: truth may have been the first but I wasn't far behind. Now there was nowhere to run, nowhere to hide. For the first time in six years abroad, I suddenly felt a very long way from home.
Chapter 4
THERE'S NO GOING BACK
You can never step into the same river twice, for fresh waters are ever flowing in upon you
.
HERACLITUS of EPHESUS (540-480 BC)
C
OSMIC
F
RAGMENTS
MAY 2001
Eleven years after some of the most dramatic and traumatic days of my life were played out there; and just seven months before the telephone call that didn't quite put me and my former colleagues in touch again; here was I making a two-hour stopover in Bahrain before setting out on the longest journey in all my allotted days.
I can recall the excitement as if it is happening this very minute. The dominant sensation is that all my birthdays are coming at once. The pitch of anticipation has triggered an adrenaline rush more familiar to adolescents than forty-somethings. For the first time in my mid-life, I can sit back and relax. Two years of online sub-editing for the Japanese have given me enough financial security to blow it all on a really ambitious journey my restless brain has been hatching for years: a crossing of the world's super-continentâEurasiaâfrom tropical southern coast to icy northern fringe.
Partly for financial reasons but mostly out of guilt at not keeping a daily travel diary, I have secured the interest of Gary Walsh, travel editor of my old newspaper the
Age
, in publishing my observations in an irregular column titled âEmails from the Edge'. I have reached a similar arrangement with the
Sydney Morning Herald
foreign desk, telling myself that if nothing is published for the folks back home I'm off on a well-earned holiday, and the rest is all bonusâand maybe history, if anything remarkable ever happens in these places way off most people's mental maps.
But this is more than a holiday, it is a voyage of adventure through unknown lands and stunning cities: one that will encompass one fifth of the land surface of the globe, between 14° and 82° east of Greenwich and from 17° to 69° north of the Equator. The 41 countries to be explored divide almost exactly in half between Asia and Europe, and almost as neatly between those where the faith of the Prophet Mohammed and that of Christ dominate the landscape. For the first time in 6000 years of civilisation, more than half of humanity lives in cities, and some of the most distinctive are to be found like markers enticing me forward on my straggling route: Tashkent, Tehran, Damascus, Istanbul, Athens, Budapest and Prague.
Friends and casual acquaintances interpret many of these markers as danger signs. Aware that my âdream journey' bears an uncanny resemblance to other people's nightmares, my thoughts fly faster than the jumbo whose port window I gaze out of this night in mid-2001, to the lands of Central Asia, the Middle East and even further to Eastern Europe. That is the direction I have chosen for this voyage, which should take two years to complete, and my return to Bahrain mentioned above will take place one quarter of the way through it.
No stranger to the road less travelled, I have already crossed Africa twice and left my footprints across vast tracts of East and South Asia, and in the course of all this wandering have trudged up mountain peaks in Borneo, China, Japan and Rwanda. Yet there is nothing aimless in the way I plan these journeys: an intricate plan, mapped out months ahead, provides a structure to be demolished only by the brick wall of reality or dumb bureaucracyâor, occasionally, by a willingness to heed local opinion. All I can foresee is that in the next two years I will be privileged to see the world as it is, not as the media or tour promoters portray it. I will meet real people in two score lands, and absorb something of the way they view the blue-green bauble we all share, most of the time in ignorance of one another's perspectives, beliefs, hopes and fears.
But even the adventurous traveller should observe the odd rule. Mine are as few as possible:
⢠Don't go to a country that is at war or slipping into it, or one under the sway of lawlessness.
⢠Try to visit all countries en route (except those to which the previous paragraph applies), taking to the air as little as possible. Since I travel to see how people live, not to meet other travellers, getting around at ground level and by public transportâtrains, buses, minibuses, taxis, ferries and shipsâis my preferred way to go.
⢠Stay in the most affordable hotels but, wherever possible, seek out lodgings with a difference. Monasteries, be they Buddhist or Christian, have a long tradition of offering hospitality to the unexpected visitor; and, as I will discover in lands as far removed as Kyrgyzstan and Montenegro, the best way to understand a country is to live among its people.
Of course, looking at the world from a metre or so above ground level, the height of my wheelchair, gives me a different view from other travellersâand this can be an unexpected asset.
As our plane begins its descent into Karachi, the intriguing vistas of Pakistan and Central Asia crowd upon my excited mind's eye. But from previous journeys I know it is not only the quirky individuals and breathtaking sights that will make this an unforgettable epic, but the self-same element of uncertainty that puts other, more placid souls off travelling at all. By definition, a journey longer than a single circumnavigation of the globe is bound to be jam-packed with surprises, not all of them pleasant. Nothing in my diary planner foretells a meeting with Osama bin Laden; my expulsion from Syria on suspicion of being a terrorist; a âgrandstand' view of the World Cup soccer final from a medieval monastery; or being dragged away from the Hungarian Parliament in handcuffs.
Of all that is unpredictable, however, one event will stand out above all others. September 11, 2001 will usher in the real 21st century and turn me into an eyewitness of the âwar on terror' from the other side of the frontline. Rolling around the Axis of Evil without a care in the world is the only way to see at close hand what âthey' really think of âus'. And you may be surprised, too, to find that the image we have of the Mideast millions is a gross distortion of the realities on the ground, mirrored only by ⦠the grossly distorted view they have of us.
A blaze of city lights under a dipping wing announces Karachi at 3.30 am local time. After Indonesia, Pakistan is the world's most populous Muslim nation, with more than 150 million souls, and just over half the countries on my itinerary have Muslim majorities.
The tarmac is rushing up to meet us. Suddenly I'm here at the âdangerous edge' of AsiaâGraham Greene's phrase seems tailor-made for Karachiâand the apprehension that within hours I will be immersed in a sea of humanity, fighting for a foothold as a new arrival among the teeming millions, has driven all Bahrain-bred broodings clear out of my mind.
Chapter 5
HERETICS AND H-BOMBS
[The Pakistani bureaucracy was characterised by 1970s Prime Minister Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto as] a class of brahmins or mandarins unrivalled in its snobbery and arrogance, insulated from the life of the people and incapable of identifying with them
.
C
HRISTINA
L
AMB
W
AITING
F
OR
A
LLAH
MAY 2001
PAKISTAN: 3â27 MAY
After arriving in Karachi I soon found myself a room at the venerable Metropole Hotel in downtown Saddar district, where I knew I was in a city of 11 million because they all rattled past my room in an endless file. Though founded as recently as 1950, the Metropoleâbuilt as a five-star hotel, but now down to two and countingâhas the grandeur of an establishment from the Raj.
I would have nothing against the place, really, if its habit of refilling plastic water bottles straight from the tap and passing them off as mineral water hadn't cost me a train ticket to the ruins of Mohenjodaro. Two hours before the train pulled out, my stomach and regions further south were devastated by a nuclear attack that laid them waste for a week. But it is the same hotel I have to thank for my recovery: for calling in a doctor who recognised that survival chances would be improved if I could be kept out of hospital; for propping up an industrial-strength fan next to my bed; and for cancelling all laundry workers' leave for the next 50 years.
Mohenjodaro, in the Indus Valley, is one of the cradles of civilisation. Had I not been struck down in Karachi, my fate on arrivalâfar from the nearest Western-style toilet, in all probabilityâdoes not bear thinking about. The Karachi daily
Dawn
newspaper mentioned that the maximum temperature around Mohenjodaro had been 52°C the day before.
I wrote in my notebook for May 2001, âEvery nation has to have a stereotype: Pakistanis are seen abroad as terrorist-cosseting, bomb-making, mullah-loving fanatics.' In Karachi a truer stereotype would be the
dhobi wallahs
(barefoot launderers who use riverbanks as their workplaces) who here prefer to call themselves
dhobi sahibs
. When I pointed out the satellite dish above one of their modest-looking houses, a
sahib
chided me, âWe're not so poor!'
Being a bit short of rivers, but notoriously resourceful, Karachi's dhobi sahibs use recycled water from local tanks. I was also amused to discover that they do takeaway laundry, drying in their lime kilns the clothes of even the most airconditioned guests from the plushest five-star hotels. As the sahib said, eyes gleaming, âWho is to know?'
My Pakistan was a succession of cities, each with its own character: squalid, bustling Karachi; stately Lahore, home to the mighty Mogul fort and restful Shalimar Gardens; modern Islamabad, forever cemented in the memory by the sight of children playing impromptu cricket on the concourse of the majestic Saudi-built Shah Faisal Mosque; and Peshawar, where the world's freshest
naan
bread washed down with sweet green tea and enjoyed among curious onlookers in the depths of Qisa Khavani bazaar helped me ignore the gun-runners' stalls that give the neighbourhood a far less friendly reputation.
And then there was Chitral, a delightful town perched in the foothills of the Hindu Kush. The usual reason to visit Chitral is its proximity to the Rumbur Valley, hard up against the Afghanistan border and home to the gaudily dressed but also hard-up Kalashâvillage-dwelling, mulberry-wine-drinking and goat-herding folk who have resisted Islam more successfully than they have tourism. But equally memorable were a couple of individuals I met there: the first byâwhat should I call it?âpredestination, and the other by prearrangement.
The predestined one was Imran Shah, 29 when we met, a one-eyed tour guide who taught in a Rumbur Valley primary school until the principal, a mullah, sacked him for telling pupils the Earth was round. âHe said this is against the teaching of the Koran, but that is not true,' protested Imran. When we stop at his old school, ex-pupilsâwho have not seen him for eighteen monthsâgreet him more like a friend than a heretic.
My prearranged meeting was with an 83-year-old, gimlet-eyed retired army officer, Major General Geoffrey Langlands, who is the very model of an expatriate civilian. A lifelong bachelor, he arrived from England immediately after World War II and, finding himself on the Pakistani side of the border after Partition, stayed in Lahore where he felt at home. Although he would much rather be remembered as a classically trained teacher and one-time principal of Pakistan's closest equivalent to Eton (Lahore's Aitchison College), his more compelling claim to fame stems from having been kidnapped by sixteen Jamali tribesmen (bandits, if you prefer) fighting to bring self-government to North Waziristan (their patch of the North West Frontier Province) in 1988.
The Jamalis found their captive a tough old bird and released him six days later without receiving ransom money, after the authorities in Peshawar passed on an undisclosed threat.
I leave Pakistan in the most spectacular way possible: by overflying Afghanistan, looking down on the western Himalaya which appears to have been sprayed by the cosmic cake-icer especially for our benefit. Afghanistan, at war since the mid-1970s, is to be missed with regret, and no direct flights link Pakistan with my first Central Asian destination of Kazakhstan, so this flight is taking me to Tashkent, Uzbekistan, where a connectionânot to mention a surpriseâawaits me.
TASHKENT TRANSIT TERMINAL: 27 MAY
Too much of my time is spent worrying how to get around, now that my travelling days are spent in the seated posture, and perhaps not enough on thinking about how others will react. Now I can see humour in the fact that, not only at Tashkent but next day in Almaty, Kazakhstan, the airlines send a fully equipped ambulance on to the tarmac to meet their only wheelchair passenger. Now I laugh, and can see I should have gone along for the ride (200 metres to the airport terminal in each case). At the time, shame to say, I saw red and refused to accompany the kind medical staff, thus no doubt gaining a well-deserved reputation as a difficult customer and spoiling the prospects for anyone who follows in my tracks.
The point I believe I was trying to make was that, as just another passenger, albeit one who couldn't walk, I was not an invalid. However, in their
lingua franca
, Russian, that is exactly the term used for one in my position, and, as I would find throughout Central Asia, a wheelchair user in public is a target for unsolicited compassion and acts of Islamic charity.
In Tashkent they called in the military when I refused to get in the ambulance and, after a diplomatic sit-off, one bamboozled rookie was given permission to accompany me as I wheeled to the terminal, with him watching beady-eyed all the way lest I make one false move. Once safe inside the terminal, I was treated like any other passenger, and found I didn't like that much either. The terminal resembled a remand prison most of whose inmates appeared to be Indians suspected of trying to emigrate illegally to Britainâand the next flight to Kazakhstan wasn't due for 27 hours. Fortunately the washroom was navigable. Sometimes, toilets are at the back of impossibly narrow cubicles that require advanced acrobatic skills to reach, and I simply can't go there â¦